MoFo Battle Royale Directors Edition, Round 1: Stanley Kubrick vs. Clint Eastwood

I was also wondering if it violated the site's "Privacy Policy" although I don't recall if it even has one.

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Winner: Stanley Kubrick.

I would argue that Space Cowboys is actually an underrated film, a dexterous and seamless blend of homage and parody that perhaps only Eastwood could have pulled off. Take another look at it sometime.

As for the question, to me, we're talking about apples and oranges—Kubrick and Eastwood are extremely different filmmakers. If I were to attempt a serious analysis, I would suggest that Kubrick is more significant in terms of advancing the cinematic medium's possibilities and adopting abstract approaches to genre. In a sense, he is cinema's Picasso. Eastwood, however, has made films that seem more personal, more intimate, and more realistically harrowing in their approach to violence.

Perhaps one could debate which ghost story is more compelling, Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973) or Kubrick's The Shining (1980).

Undoubtedly, though, Eastwood constituted the easier director to work for. Reportedly, Kubrick put actor Scatman Crothers through fifty takes of a scene on The Shining. Crothers' next film was Eastwood's Bronco Billy, released the same year. Fearful after his experience with Kubrick, Crothers wondered whether Eastwood would place him through a similar wringer. When Eastwood printed the first take, Crothers nearly cried.

Of course Kubrick. The man's a cinematic genius. Eastwood's great in his own right, but Kubrick is leagues ahead of most directors...

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Stanley Kubrick is probably the film director that most often shows up in lists of favorite film directors. That's expected given that he is a well known Hollywood film director whose films are well known and at the same time extremely respected by both the casual film fan, the hardcore cinephile and the critic, thus achieving broad appeal and being broadly known.

I think that the top 3 most well regarded directors among hardcore film buffs (like the guys at MUBI) are Kubrick, Bergman and Tarkovsky. But Kubrick is by far more mainstream than Bergman and Tarkovsky, who are non-English filmmarkers.

His films are also artistically accomplished and very entertaining at the same time, something that very few directors managed to do (Bergman and Tarkovsky failed at regard).

I don't think I can name another English language filmmaker who is as admired as Kubrick. Of course, Hitchcock has a huge number of fans but at the same time many people don't hold his body of work (thrillers and horror movies) in very high regard, Kubrick is more of a sacred cow in that respect.